Brown defends "very good" speaker
Labour MPs claim Martin victim of witch hunt
Monday, 25, Feb 2008 12:00
Gordon Brown has defended Michael Martin, insisting he is a very good speaker.
The Glasgow North East MP faces calls to resign as speaker of the House of Commons over the latest parliamentary expenses row.
On a visit to Clapham this morning, the prime minister said the allegations were now a matter for the House of Commons, but told reporters Mr Martin had been a "very, very good speaker".
At the weekend his aide Mike Granatt resigned as his spokesman after inadvertently misleading the media.
Mr Martin has been criticised after it was revealed his wife has claimed more than £4,000 in expenses for taxi fares since 2004.
It is also reported he claimed more than £17,000 for maintaining a mortgage-free house in his constituency and used Air Miles accrued on official trips to fly family members.
Senior Labour figures have, however, said the speaker has become victim of a media witch hunt, blaming Tory snobbery at the former sheet metal worker's working-class origins.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg today agreed there had been a "bit of a witch hunt" against him.
Mr Martin is currently conducting his own "root and branch" inquiry into MPs' expenses but now faces his own investigation by the parliamentary standards watchdog.
Mr Clegg told the MP he thought Mr Martin was "fully committed" to overhauling the system of parliamentary expenses, which at present was "bringing the whole of politics into disrepute".
Earlier health secretary Alan Johnson told GMTV he supported the speaker.
"I do think this will blow over and the people who are, in some quarters of the press, who are obsessed about Michael Martin will move on and pick on someone else," he said.
Conservative MP Peter Bottomley told BBC Radio 4's The World At One it would be "totally inappropriate" for him to be hounded out.
He added: "But I do remember the words of his wife - and this is not in any way a nudge to him - who said that if she heard he was going to stop, she would regard that as the biggest present she could have."